Insomnistwrote:
They knew. Remember Benten took Yasaburo to one of their meetings, and he hung out and ate dinner with them and chatted before putting on a show and Benten told everyone he was a tanuki, which they'd already guessed?

I did like the series, but the air of casual evil really did distract me from the story and subtract from my experience.

Ah, you're right. I had forgotten about that part.

As for casual evil, I'm recalling our conversation earlier about horror. Isn't this just another portrayal of the darkness of humanity? We make terrible, horrible justifications for the evil we commit all the time or, even worse, simply block it out and pretend that we don't know any better.

Insomnistwrote:
They knew. Remember Benten took Yasaburo to one of their meetings, and he hung out and ate dinner with them and chatted before putting on a show and Benten told everyone he was a tanuki, which they'd already guessed?

I did like the series, but the air of casual evil really did distract me from the story and subtract from my experience.

Ah, you're right. I had forgotten about that part.

As for casual evil, I'm recalling our conversation earlier about horror. Isn't this just another portrayal of the darkness of humanity? We make terrible, horrible justifications for the evil we commit all the time or, even worse, simply block it out and pretend that we don't know any better.

Yes. In particular the general confusion at my being horrified reminds me of this bit:

In these cases the "shock" isn't being used to just mess with people. You can take really disturbing information, word it politely in a newspaper article, and not really phase anyone with it. [...] the "shock" is used to drive the information home at an emotional level, like a hammer driving home a nail. It has to break through so we feel it.

The Eccentric Family is an excellent example of a series that set up the horror but (intentionally) neglected to hammer it home. I guess you could say it left the hammer in the hands of the imaginations of the audience. Like I said before, this would be a completely different story if we'd been forced to watch Souichirou being killed, butchered, and cooked.

But my imagination hammered me with it anyway, and it changed the story that I experienced.

I just finished watching this show today. I had a hard time getting into the show at the start given the weird art style and the silliness of everything going down, but once the story focuses on the mystery about how Soichiro became dinner for the Friday Fellows, that is when this show really takes off. I have to say that I hope that Soun was eaten by Friday Fellows there, and that was hinted since he did soak up in some hot water and never returned. But in any case, this show is well-crafted.